Don't be Silenced

Tag: StillIRise

My body is a war zone
Fields of devastation
Left on her barren plains
Bombs and rockets
have exploded here.
I pick up the shattered pieces
And try to
Put them back together
With tears
That will not come
Shaking and numb
I make my way
Across the battle ground
The used condoms
He tossed aside
For me to clear up
He derides
Yells at me
To pick up his clothes
“Pick up my pants!” He shouts
I bend down
I acquiesce
In silence
I do what he says

Am I broken?
I don’t know yet
he told me
“Sex is the test”
If there is
No connection.
I failed
I showed emotion,
Only distress.
He complained
He saw
Sadness in my eye
I could not
Pretend pleasure
Not even
For him
For this
My screams
Put him off
His climax
His stroke
Kept going
Hard
Like
ice
Concrete
Fire
..
Blood
no blood
Robotic
Fear
Breath
in me
Quiet
Rising
Stifled
Cries
I could not
Struggle
Move
Not
My hips
My arms
I was stilled
To a silent
Stupid
Stunned rabbit.
Stupid
Contortion
Stupid
Heart beat
Stupid
Stupid
Me

These are
Some of
The feelings
Irrelevant
To the man
Who rang me
Early morning
From the police

I’m not interested
In your feelings
He shouts
I’m not saying
I disbelieve you
He says
What is there
To disbelieve?
What is there
Left of me?

When I can
Still breathe
When my
Chest
Has stopped
Seizing
When I have
Woken still
On the floor
Because
Once more
I could not
Face
The bed

Then
When,
Then
You can
Judge me
wanting.
I could not..
I failed

D’you want us
To investigate?!
He yells
Crack of dawn
Me, broken
Again
Are you
going
to co-operate?!
He interrogates
My broken body
My broken sobs
“Yes”
I say

No

“No,” is not a word
These men
Like this
Can take
Yes,
No
It’s the same
To them

No! a stifled scream
Woman
Held within,
Crushed
Like my music
That stopped.
Like the blood
That ceased
Flowing
From my womb
That day,
The day
He
invaded
My everything
With his hard
Calloused being

Determined
His
Hard
His erection
That did not
Care for
My feeling
My pain
My screams
on repeat
Like a rhythm
My fear,
His aphrodisiac

My fear
My stillness
My quaking,
His opportunity

He laughs at
My terror
My horror
My sickness
My devastate.
My room
That swims
Before his
Realisation
Of Sudden fun
In all this
Premeditation
Now
Protection off,
Protection gone
The chance
To force pregnancy
against
Everything
I believe

Now
He knows
he truly
discovered
The essence
Of me

“I’d better not
intimidate you”
He’d said
Yesterday,
My timidity
A station
Where he could park
His things
His anger
His directions
His misogyny
His pornographic dream

Control,
Demands.
Blindness
To my rising despair

He vents
His demons
Hatred
He tried
To bury them
Deep inside me
As he could squeeze..
Intimate
As could be

We cannot compare it
To the personal trauma
That rages through veins
Pistol fire across my boundaries
What he did
Broke me apart
The pieces of shattered me
Cracked open
For everyone to see
Everywhere I turn
the perpetrator’s friends
What’s next? Public humiliation?
Men like him
Are judge and jury

No locks changed
No alarms
Can make me feel safe
He may come back again one day
The depth of this fear
I cannot explain..

Afterwards
he wrote me
a letter which says
“I felt I was
abandoning
you to a fate
Worse than death”
Like a prophecy
A hex

Try talking therapy, they say
Are you joking?
As if I didn’t do that anyway
A prison
I cannot escape
While he
Walks free
Every day
From this war crime

I, still being tried
Still justifying
Still unable
To adequately explain
To fully comprehend

Rise
From the ashes of my broken relationships
From the devastation of my rape
From the obliteration of men’s hate
From the accusations of privilege
by way of my perceived race
Rise from my woman’s place
On the receiving end of men’s hate
On the receiving end of men’s sex
As if I had no other purpose
But to serve their appetite I was born to sate

Rise from their mistakes
The ones for which they
Are never accountable

Rise away from my home
Of seven years
I am just supposed to up and leave like
Sand and mud
He displaced
With the hatred of his rape
With
the so- called witnesses
the neighbours
the friends of his
who mocked
My grief
who lied to police
Tried to silence
My cries for help
My pleas to keep
The perpetrator away
Just from my door
I didn’t ask for more

The outrage
That a man
Should have to do jail time
For anything
In this sham
They call the
Justice system
The criminal injustice of them
The way it is weighted in favour of men
Who can remove women from juries who judge them
Where they have peers as policemen
Laughing at my injuries
Sneering at my rape
Mocking my distress
Revelling in their own hate
Watching my face
For signs of shame

Their anger and rage
When I stared right back
Proud as ever
Met their eyes
Like a challenge
Instead of bowing my head
I look at them
and even a man that stupid
could read my mind

You didn’t do your fucking job
And you know it
You are a disgrace
And you know it
You are a perpetrator of hate
And you know it
You probably did the same thing
to your own wife
Last night
Why
Just this morning
I can see it in your eyes
The guilt crystallised
In you fury
Your rage

You blast me from your side
Of the sapphire unit desk
You’re leaning over
Your nearly in my face
Your fat neck
Straining at your collar
The outrage
That a woman
stood up to you
The audacity.
No cctv
Tell me again
Why police never installed cctv in any of these
Places?
Where people die and are assaulted and are bullied and abused
The victims never leave or leave with injuries
While police walk away with impunity

Otherwise why you mocking the actions upon me of this guy
Why you working on the sexual offences unit?
mentality of
a sexual offender,
I mean how else do you explain your contempt of my gender?
you don’t give a shit about my trauma

Your shouting at me to listen to your voice over mine
When you were hired to crack this crime
The crime of drowning out the voices of females
Using our bodies
Then claiming it was our desire
How do I rise
From the ashes of this fire?
This funeral pyre
This fate worse than death
Which he, the rapist told police
he said yes
he wrote that her in a letter yes
within hours of his

supposedly consensual sex
that left me with injuries internally and
to
my pelvis
my neck
my psyche
my life
straight after his email read:
“I felt I was abandoning you
to a fate worse than death itself”
He said he wrote that- hell
“Detective Inspector” said
” We don’t know what it means.
We didn’t ask him.
It means nothing- less:
It is nothing”
The police meeting
about my rape
That was like attending an
Inquest into my own death

Rise rise
How do I rise
From this?
But I will
And you know I will
I don’t know how I will
But you know my will
and you and I know
I will

Months of prisoner in my own home
Afraid to go out
Just to get food
I’d rather not go out at all
Than go out dishevelled with
My head bowed
That is how proud

I stayed quiet all that time now
This
is how loud

Still
I could not stand
So I fought lying down
Sitting at my desk
Crying down the phone
You didn’t help me
So I fought alone
You try to crush me
But I kept going
You shout me down
So I put it in writing
You ignore my letters
So I wrote poems
You bin them
So I put them on the internet and
Share them
I linked up with other women
Who went through the same thing
were treated the same way
Here I am again
To hold a mirror to your face
your disgrace
And you
see your own betrayal

It’s not a sign of
submissiveness
It’s pain
She who
Could not meet your eye
Lowers her gaze
Looks the other way

Each one of us
Holding secrets
That would blow your mind
Break your heart
Marriage and relationships
Hiding
scared
With nowhere else to go
Bringing violence right here in my bedroom
Unspeakable brutality home
To your sons, daughters
Normalising what should never be
Stealing our dignity

She says
“Each day
The sunsets
Oh god
Shake my body
I want to kill myself
My life is hell
He drink and drink
And then
He come into my room
And-”

I’m so angry
At the inactivity of men
To change anything
This is not a problem
Of women

The violence of men
Upon your sisters
Daughters
Mothers
Cowards
you who turn your backs
Look away
Take advantage
All in your own way
Do nothing
To change the law
Make your own report
Get her to
Do what you want
Feed your sense of
entitlement

You have no right
No right
Repeat after all of us
No right
To take away our rights
Destroy us inside
We owe you nothing

Each one human
Each one equal
Each one fuming
With the indignity
Of her wasted
Precious time
Her exploited
Precious life
Her voice that was
Drowned out
Her unheard shout

If you could put
The screams
The horror
If all the worlds women
End to end
There would be
No silence
No indifference
No submissiveness
No war on helpless poor
Young girls who never saw
Any other way of life
No power cut

All our energy could
Light up cities
No silence
No quietude
No punishment
Of the feminine
No shame
No victim blame
No embarrassment
Just in feeding our children

No women’s problems
They belong to humans

We are sovereign
We are human
We are queen
We are you

Sex is not violence
Sex is not degradation
Sex is not
Against my will
Sex is not fear

Love making
Is not hate
It is not persuasion
Forced pregnancy
Pressure
Disregard
Exploitation
Anything
He can take
Pornography
Concealed
Sex tapes